Today is one of those days where it seems the weather forecasters are throwing random symbols at the weather chart, and hoping some stick. In the space of an hour or two the forecast has changed a lot, but not for the better - same ingredients, different times ! Instead of the rain at the start of the chart above, it has been dry for the last hour or two, although when I say dry I mean not actually raining - there are still plenty of puddles to see. The best forecast for today would be something like: random rain at any time, some heavy, and some light, with the chance of a sunny spell sometime in the day. The temperature forecast for an afternoon high of 15° C is the only feature that may prove to be correct. Tomorrow may start with sunny spells, but most of the middle of the day will feature that peculiar symbol of a white cloud with nthe sun peeping over the top, and a drip of rain at the bottom. It officially translates to "light shower (day)". The thing I can never understand is the difference between that and a "light shower" an hour later, but still in the middle of the day, but "(day)" not shown by "light shower". Anyway, tomorrow could be 15° C like today.

  Yesterday was another day when I hardly did anything at all. This time I can't seem to think of a single physical thing I did that was productive unless I include a bit of washing up, but the washing up was essential because I needed some of the stuff that was in the sink. Other than that I read a lot, watched half a dozen episodes of Drop The Dead Donkey, and learned a bit more about my new phone.
  This picture is a reminder of how awful yesterday was, although the camera has brightened it a bit. The grey sky and either rain, or general dampness, was what sapped any desire to do anything useful. However the picture itself did inspire me to play with the camera in my phone a bit more, but much later in the evening. What surprised me was that in the original, full sized picture I could zoom in and count each individual rain drop on the body of the grey car. Before examining this picture I had realised the camera in my new phone was good, but not how good.

   It was all the good reports of the camera that inspired me to want to buy the phone.  When first put on sale it was hideously expensive in the region of £1000 ! Now it has been superseded by a new model, the Huawei P40, and because of America's paranoia about Huawei, the value of the Huawei P30 Pro (my model) has dropped a lot. Mine cost £239. To make it even more of a bargain it is the version with 128GB of internal memory.

  That amount of internal memory means that under normal conditions I don't need to fit an extra memory card inside. I still bought a special memory card for it, and quite an expense because it is a rare type that maybe on Huawei uses. It was supposed to be delivered today, but it was delivered yesterday. To my amazement Amazon managed a delivery before 1pm. It was actually about twenty past midday when, being small, the packet was shoved through my letter box.
  In this picture I took yesterday, the nano memory (NM) card is still in it's bubble on the card it comes on. That makes it a little more difficult to compare it with the micro SD card above it. The NM card is not designed to pop out like SD and Micro SD cards, but instead to be used on tray that plugs into the phone. That means the bits that would be for the pop in/pop out fitting can be trimmed off the side and edges. It would be foolhardy to do it, but a micro SD card could be cut down to fit in the NM tray. It still wouldn't work, even assuming you didn't accidently cut through the chip inside, because the contacts are under the device instead of line up along one edge.

  One important thing I did yesterday was to be quite careful about what I ate. I usually do that anyway - at least to some extent. Yesterday I didn't take any chances. I could easily have had a pile of rice cakes and cheese, but I didn't. Usually I thought rice cakes were actually safe, but since the high(ish) blood glucose reading I got yesterday morning, I am wondering if the rice cakes I ate the day before that might have included some sugar in them. It is probably just imagination, but with hindsight I think they may have actually tasted sweeter than others.

  I stayed clear of rice cakes, and had hot soup for lunch. I had a can of oxtail soup followed by a can of lentil and ham soup. As well as fears about the rice cakes, the advantage of hot soups were that they were nice and warming on a cold and miserable day ! My dinner was the diced beef with sprouts and leeks that I had cooked for the previous day but didn't eat then. I have to say it was rather nice, and maybe it was because it had been left to stand in a sealed container for so long, the beef seemed extra tender.

  I spent a lot of the afternoon reading, and then a lot of the early evening watching more recordings of old Drop The Dead Donkey episodes. That is about all I can say for those hours. It was not until I was heading for bed that I got sidetracked, or overcome with curiosity, and started playing with the camera in my new phone. I am still disappointed that I have still not found a way to reduce the resolution of pictures. That would be handy when sending them as email or Whatsapp attachments.
  I was particularly interested in exploring the "Pro" setting for the camera. It is the Pro settings, and the German made Leica lenses that make the camera in the phone a bit special. There is one set up that can make the Pro settings much better than when the camera is set on auto (the "Photo" setting). It is the ability to set the shutter speed to a fixed value - quite high for things like moving trains, and medium (maybe 1/125th second) for bands on a reasonably lit, but still dim compared to good room lighting). There is no aperture setting in this mode, but the ISO sensitivity can be set to auto, and that approximates to be able change the exposure.

  When I took the screenshot above, that shows the Pro position, and some of it's controls (there are a few more at the top of the screen) I accidently included a small round thumbnail of one of the test pictures I took before going to bed last night. It is the little picture of my flipflops next to my feet. That was taken in Pro mode in rather dull lighting, but it came out rather well even if the actual subject is not exactly pleasant !

  I took that picture at 9.08pm, and I was in bed very soon after. I must admit I thought I was in bed a bit earlier than that. It took me a bit of time to fall asleep, but it probably wasn't much later than 9.30pm before I was asleep. From then on I seemed to sleep very well if you include a few visits to the toilet during the night. I was slightly peeved that I woke up before midnight for a pee, but only because it felt like I had been sleeping for far longer.

  My dreams were quite a jumble of odd images. I can't remember any details, but in my dreams I was in a pub, walking down quite a few roads, some familiar, and some not. I went into a supermarket, and a small shop. Visited a railway station, and I think I got on, but may not have travelled on a preserved vintage train. The oddest, but rather nice thing, is that my house was right next to Catford Bridge station - exactly where the old Railway Tavern (now Catford Bridge Tavern) stands.

  I had a sort of pleasant surprise this morning. I had woken up for a pee at about 4am, and used the opportunity to turn the heater on set to just 1kw. I was soon asleep again, and expecting to wake up at 6am. It was actually 7.30am when I woke up. That was the best lay in I have had in ages. It does make me wonder why I needed so much extra sleep, but with nothing better to do on most mornings it would be no bother at all. This morning getting up earlier would have fitted with some of my plans a bit better.

  This morning I am happy to say that my eating regime yesterday worked as intended. This morning my blood glucose is down to a good 7.8mmol/l, and brings my running average for the month back to a more typical average. Whether I can manage that tomorrow is debatable. My plans for this morning are to go to the Pharmacy to order my next repeat prescription - hopefully ready to pick up on Wednesday when some of my tablets will run out. After that I want to get some shopping from Aldi. There is nothing I need from there desperately, but topping up a few supplies would be convenient after going to the Pharmacy just around the corner from Aldi.